The artist should have used the old Warner Brothers visual gag of having flames shoot out of his mouth.
You can’t expect everybody to know enough about sushi, wasabi, and avocado to get the gag. Fine. In fact, without comments 1 and 2, I wouldn’t have been able to fill in the blanks.
Here I go overanalyzing a gag again, but the reader would have to know three things: 1) that wasabi can resemble avocado, 2) that wasabi can be hot hot hot, and 3) that both wasabi and avocado are served with sushi.

Dagbrown, sushi must be pretty different in Japan. It’s very common to have avocado in sushi in America. The California roll has avocado in it, and is probably the most common roll in America—it’s a nice “safe” introduction to sushi for Westerners who find sushi scary.

At one time, I went to my favourite Vietnamese restaurant (Pagolac, in Edmonton), and had to share a table with some teenagers. The one got his bowl of soup, and immediately added a very large spoonful of the hot chili sauce to it. His friend said, “Whoa dude- that stuff’s hot!”

Another spoonful goes in.

“Yeah- I know. I like hot stuff.”

Another spoonful goes in.

“No- it’s -really- hot.”

“Yeah, I -like- hot stuff.”

A fourth spoonful goes in (this is about half the jar), and he stirs up his soup before tasting it.

It doesn’t matter if avocado is typically served with sushi or not. If you are not familiar with wasabi, you are by definition a sushi-newbie in any case, and wouldn’t have any idea if avocado is or isn’t common together with sushi. Judging only from the look of it, avocado (guacamole) is a very sensible guess.

I actually did this myself once! I did already know what wasabi is, and the avocado wasn’t served on the side – but sometimes some of the avocado squishes out of a maki roll onto the plate, and that’s what I thought a medium-sized glob of wasabi was. Tears were literally streaming down my face…
Of course I found this cartoon hysterical.

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